Traditional printing devices rely on a mechanically operated carriage to transport a print head in a linear direction as other mechanics advance a print medium in an orthogonal direction. As the print head moves over the print medium, an image may be laid down. This systematic, translational movement of the print head allows the image to be defined in memory as horizontal page-width print swaths. Such a memory organization is optimal for a deterministic operational environment where the future location of the print head is known well in advance. Further, such an environment allows for the sequential access of memory, thereby negating the need for recursive and computationally expensive memory address calculations.
While this memory allocation scheme may work well with traditional printers, non-deterministic or random motion of handheld image translation devices discourages a sequential and interleaved image definition in memory. For example, such an image definition utilized in a handheld image translation device would require a determination of the absolute position of the image translation device and the specific image characteristics associated with that position to be located and accessed in memory for every print pulse. These memory calculations, while computationally expensive, may also impact the printed image. Failure to select and print the image defined in memory prior to a change in location may result in poor image quality or no image at all.